When you first sign up for Home Chef, you take a short quiz about your meal preferences and dietary restrictions.

Based on this quiz, Home Chef selects meals for you each week. If you’d rather receive different meals, it’s easy to swap them. You can also skip a week whenever you like.

I think the Home Chef website is very user-friendly, and I like how many meal options they offer. Most weeks, Home Chef offers 10 dinner options, a breakfast, a smoothie, and a fruit basket.

When my box shipped, I received an email with tracking information.

Ingredients for each meal are bundled together in plastic, and meats are always packed separately at the bottom of the box under ice packs to help maintain freshness.

Now, on to the food!

Meal #1- Chicken Chili Verde with Lime Crema and Fresh Cilantro

Calories: 591 per serving

Prep Time: 35-45 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Even though the weather has been warming up where I live, I haven’t been able to shake my wintery cravings for soups and stews. When I saw this recipe for Chicken Chili Verde on the menu, I couldn’t resist— it looked delicious, and I’ve never made green chili at home before.

After dicing an onion, mincing some garlic, chopping cilantro, and zesting and quartering a lime, I got to cooking.

First, I seared two chicken breasts in a Dutch oven and then transferred them into the oven to cook through. When they were done cooking, I set them aside to cool and started working on the chili.

Home Chef provided the pre-made verde sauce (it’s actually green enchilada sauce), so the chili came together really quickly. After sautéing the onion and garlic, I simply added beans, water, shredded chicken, chopped cilantro, and the green enchilada sauce. (Note that Home Chef recommended adding the beans and the bean liquid from the can, but I opted to rinse them instead. I’m just not a fan of the viscous liquid that comes with canned beans, and I’ve always been taught to discard it.)

I let the chili simmer for a few minutes, and while I was waiting for it to cook I made lime crema by combining sour cream with lime juice and zest.

This dish was extremely easy to make, and it turned out really tasty! It was hearty and filling, and I like that the flavor was brighter and more vibrant than the traditional red chili that I typically make. I think I’m definitely going to try recreating this recipe at home!

Next up, I decided to pick this recipe for Classic French Green Peppercorn Pork Tenderloin. If you regularly read my Home Chef reviews, you’ll know that I’ve been on something of a pork tenderloin kick, so I couldn’t resist this dish! (I think all three of my past boxes have contained pork tenderloin dishes!)

First, I peeled and chopped the provided carrots and got them boiling in salted water.

While they cooked, I seared the tenderloin and then transferred it to a baking sheet alongside asparagus tossed in olive oil.

I let the asparagus and pork cook in the oven while I mashed the cooked carrots with butter and made the peppercorn sauce from minced shallot, heavy cream, sherry, demi-glace, and green peppercorns.

When everything was ready, I sliced the pork and plated it with the veggies and sauce.

This dish was incredible! The peppercorn sauce was extremely easy to make, but it tasted like something I’d expect to receive in a French steakhouse. The carrots were buttery and rich, and I loved the asparagus.

Last up, I picked out this Tofu Sushi Bowl recipe. I don’t often cook with tofu at home, but I LOVE sushi and this recipe was calling my name!

I cooked the rice in salted water, cubed the tofu, sliced the provided mini cucumbers, and made spicy mayo by combining sriracha with mayo. (Side note: I love that Home Chef always sends mayo from Sir Kensington’s— so fancy!)

I sliced the avocado and then made the salad by combining carrot, cucumber, rice vinegar, olive oil, and salt.

For the tofu, I seared it in a hot nonstick pan and then added in a little water and some teriyaki glaze. (The tofu was seriously delicious— I couldn’t stop sneaking little bites while I was finishing off the cooking.)

To plate, I transferred the cooked rice between two bowls and topped each one with tofu, carrot salad, and sliced avocado. I served the spicy mayo on the side and topped each dish with some furikake.

These bowls were such a delight. First of all, they were so pretty! I also loved the combination of ingredients. Altogether, this was a fresh and tasty meal.

Verdict: Home Chef offers great variety when it comes to meal selection, and I like that the menus often feature classic dishes and comfort foods. I really enjoyed all of my meal picks this week! In terms of value, Home Chef is very competitively priced in the meal box subscription market. Their meals start at $9.95 per serving, which is cheaper than Plated ($12 per serving) and on par with Blue Apron ($9.99 per serving) and Hello Fresh ($9.99 per serving).

Lindsey is a professional baker by day and a subscription box junkie by night. She first subscribed to Birchbox in 2013 and her addiction grew when she signed up for Graze, PopSugar, and Knoshy. Her favorite part about being a subscription box addict is discovering new products- especially gourmet goodies, beauty products, and kitchen tools!

All views in this review are the opinion of the author. My Subscription Addiction will never accept payment in exchange for a review, but will accept a box at no cost to provide honest opinions on the box. This post may contain affiliate/referral links. If you buy something, MSA may earn an affiliate commission. Read the complete My Subscription Addiction disclosure.

17 Comments

JessicaApril 18, 2017 at 7:51 am

A word of warning… Just letting you guys know if you try this and do not want the service anymore, please be aware of when you cancel. I went on and hit the pause button per their direction which brings up another screen which makes you hit pause again… I apparently missed this- in fact there may be a third screen to pause as well- basically make sure you have the confirmation email to confirm you cancelled… I am now stuck with another week of delivery, which I did not want at all and frankly is not worth the cost… My fault for not making sure I had it right… but frustrating none the less…

The meals are super yummy, and I agree with the tofu dish (it was so enriched with layers of flavor). Also my shipments had punctures in the meat packaging which caused blood to leak everywhere. And I also am concerned with the freshness of the meats especially when they are exposed to air. They’ve given me a refund every time. But it does concern me since it’s happened a handful of times.

I have just received my third Home Chef box and have loved all of the recipes with the exception of the spaghetti and meatballs which was way too garlicky. The steak in one of my boxes leaked a little during shipping but since everything else was wrapped tightly and it didn’t seep into any of the other food I washed it all off and moved on.

I love home chef! They’ve had growing pains as a small business but I’ve been with them for over a year. Overtime something happens or the ingredients are not up to par, I just send them an e-mail. It takes ten 1-3 days to get back and they are very reasonable to deal with.

I am however, EXTREMELY upset they dropped their breakfast option. This was a perfect Sunday brunch for us every week! 🙁 SO UPSET!

I cancelled yesterday because they didn’t respond to any of my attempts to contact customer service. My first box arrived LEAKING BLOOD. There was steak juice all over the bottom of the box and the recipe notebook they included. The rest of the food was fine because it was on the top of the box, but the meat was NOT airtight. Unlike the other food service companies, Home Chef shipping lasted two days, which added to my worry the meat wasn’t safely preserved. Very disappointed, especially because I love the menu they offer. Even after I cancelled, customer service didn’t reach out to me except for in an automated email saying how busy they are. Oh well…

That’s a bummer, sorry that happened. I also received my first box leaking through, it was shrimp juice (yuck!) from the bag that somehow got punctured, likely in the packing process. I emailed them with pictures attached and they emailed me back within 12 hours giving me a $10 credit for the damaged shrimp. It felt more than fair since the rest of the meal was intact and with my discount for the first box, that was the price for the whole meal. I just bought new shrimp from the grocery store.

I canceled months ago because the chicken packaging leaked, again. I was able to get through to Costumer Service the second time and they told me they recently changed the packaging but never had a complaint regarding leakage. As with you, I felt the menu was superb and I never had problems with the veggies or canisters. I just could not trust the packaging of the meats.